ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have provided a comprehensive analysis of the critical functions and issues facing Korean companies in such areas as business strategy, finance, marketing, operations, human resource management (HRM), small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurship, expatriate and overseas management, and women and gender. The evolution of the global competitive environment and the Asian Crisis of the late 1990s weakened previous models of Korean business (Rowley and Bae, 1998; Rowley et al., 2002). The chaebol, Korea’s large, diversified conglomerates, have long been considered an engine of growth and came to dominate the economy. The notion of being ‘too big to fail’, however, is now less prevalent in Korea. For instance, the Daewoo group, then one of the big five chaebol groups, collapsed and failed in the aftermath of the 1997 crisis and Hyundai was extensively restructured. However, the importance of the chaebol remains; for example Samsung’s sales of US$160 billion in 2007 from its 60 affiliates alone represent nearly one-fifth (17 per cent) of Korea’s gross domestic product.
